Hurricanes have made Caribbeans the world’s latest climate refugees.

And officials from the islands haven’t held back in reminding the industrialized world who’s at fault here. (Hint: not island people.)

Over the weekend, Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit was unapologetic as he spoke to the United Nations General Assembly. Hurricane Maria lashed his island before going on to destroy Puerto Rico. The Category 5 storm killed at least 15 residents of Dominica last week.

“While the big countries talk, the small island nations suffer,” said Skerrit. “We need action, and we need it now.”

It’s no secret that the developing world, especially island nations, will bear the brunt of climate change impacts — even though these places have contributed the least to global warming. And Caribbean leaders used their platform in New York City this past weekend to hammer this point home.

The country of Antigua and Barbuda is struggling to rebuild following landfalls by Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Prime Minister Gaston Browne eventually made his way to the U.N. with sobering news: “For the first time in 300 years, there is no permanent resident of Barbuda.”

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3M pays up after Minnesota sued over poisoned drinking water.

The Post-it note company settled an eight-year-long suit over the health effects of perfluorochemicals (PFCs) for $850 million on Tuesday.

Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson had sued 3M Co. for $5 billion, alleging that it dumped massive amounts of PFCs into Twin Cities landfills for half a century — while aware its actions could contaminate groundwater and pose “a substantial risk to human health and the environment.”

The conglomerate — which manufactures Scotch tape and Ace bandages, among thousands of other items — maintains that its actions did not endanger people’s health. But the money will go toward drinking water and water sustainability projects for local communities affected by PFCs.

3M was one of the biggest manufacturers of PFCs, which were widely used in nonstick cookware, stain-resistant repellents, and other products until 2002. Recent studies have linked PFCs to cancer and adverse birth outcomes. The Minnesota suit went so far as to say that 3M intentionally suppressed scientific research into the negative health effects of the chemicals in question.

Hundreds of mayors stand up to Scott Pruitt over climate change.

EPA chief Scott Pruitt received an unusual letter Tuesday morning. Two hundred and thirty-six mayors from 47 U.S. states and territories had sent him a clear message: Stop dismantling the Clean Power Plan.

Last October, Pruitt announced his intentions to repeal and replace the Obama-era plan, the nation’s first attempt at regulating harmful greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. So far, Pruitt has done a bang-up job of repealing the policy, but the “replace” part has yet to materialize.

Now, mayors of cities already hit hard by climate change, like Houston and New Orleans, are banding together with mayors from across the country to take a stand. “We strongly oppose the proposed repeal of the Clean Power Plan,” they wrote. “Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is essential to protect our citizens against the worst impacts of climate change.”

An old coal-fired plant in North Dakota is trying to go green.

The Minnkota Power Cooperative’s Milton R. Young station got a $6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to design a carbon capture model that would reduce the plant’s carbon emissions by 90 percent.

The 40-year-old Minnkota station has two coal-powered units that together produce roughly 700,000 kilowatts of energy. Its larger unit is slated to get retrofitted with carbon capture technology — when CO2 is sucked from the air and stored underground so it doesn’t enter the atmosphere.

But the project will take more than a year to design, and at the end of that period, Minnkota Power might decide that the project isn’t economically feasible.

Then again, the Trump administration passed a budget this month that contains enormous incentives for clean coal tech, and researchers say carbon capture could be key to keeping global temperatures under the 2 degrees C limit.

Wait, hold up: Are scientists and the Trump administration in agreement for once?

Rex Tillerson is caught in a love triangle with Russia and the U.S.

“The relationship that I had with Putin spans 18 years now,” the secretary of state said during a 60 Minutes interview with CBS’ Margaret Frank. “It was always about what I could do to be successful on behalf of my shareholders, and how Russia could succeed.” A true deal-maker.

But as U.S. secretary of state, the ex-CEO of ExxonMobil is supposed to put the United States’ interests first. That should ostensibly put some pressure on the relationship between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Tillerson, which was commemorated with a Russian friendship medal in 2013 after ExxonMobil signed deals with Rosneft, the state-owned Russian oil company.

Russia is one of the world’s top exporters of both oil and gas. As Alex Steffen and Rebecca Leber have written, the country stands to benefit from procrastinating on climate change action that would limit fossil fuel extraction.

In the 60 Minutes interview, Tillerson recounted his first meeting with the Russian president after becoming U.S secretary of state. “Same man, different hat,” is how he recalls reintroducing himself.

“What he is representing is different than what I now represent,” Tillerson elaborated. “And I said to him, ‘I now represent the American people.’”

Convincing! And now, on to the SNL skit that apparently made Tillerson laugh out loud:

Ditch the deodorant, save the planet?

A new study brings to light a little-known source of dangerous emissions: personal care products.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, used computer models to study how a wide range of stuff people use in their homes, from lotion to house paint, contributes to air pollution. Printer ink, glue, and cleaning products contain petroleum-based chemicals. Even your deodorant may release smog-promoting particles into the air (not to mention your armpit).

Researchers showed that these volatile chemical products (VCPs) produce half of the volatile organic compounds found in Los Angeles. That means that household products may contribute as much to air pollution as motor vehicles do. VCPs help create ozone, the compound that provokes asthma, and PM2.5, super-small pollutants that can cause cancer and lung disease.

It’s hard to believe that a dab of lotion could be as harmful as a gallon of gasoline, but gas only produces carbon dioxide (which causes a whole different set of problems). A full 40 percent of the chemicals in lotions and other personal products float into the atmosphere.

So the next time you’re indulging in some well-deserved self-care, maybe go easy on the products.

The EPA’s latest explanation for the taxpayer-funded spending spree is that first-class upgrades help Pruitt avoid confrontations with fellow airport-goers — like when someone yelled at him “Scott Pruitt, you’re f—ing up the environment.” These types of encounters make Pruitt feel “unsafe” while flying, as Henry Barnett of the agency’s Office of Criminal Enforcement told Politico.

But that’s a strange way to justify all those first-class tickets, considering the events described happened in an airport, not a plane. Plus, airline safety experts say first-class isn’t really safer than the rank-and-file alternative.

Federal regulations say government travelers should act as any “prudent person” would. Pruitt could easily buy a window seat in coach with two aides by his side, as Norm Eisen, a former U.S. ambassador, pointed out on Twitter. Along with his 24/7 bodyguards, it seems like that should be enough.

Then again, maybe there’s a security advantage to heated towels and complimentary snacks we haven’t considered yet. Or maybe this is just another step of Pruitt’s plan to dismantle the agency he runs: spend its entire budget on extra legroom.

Republican Lisa Murkowski says it’s time for her party to take climate change seriously.

“Why is it politically charged to say climate change?” the Alaska senator asked during a speech on Wednesday. “I see in my state the impact we have from warming temperatures.”

She makes a good point. Alaska is experiencing coastal erosion, bigger storms, and melting permafrost.

So … why did she just open up new areas for oil drilling?

Murkowski only backed the Senate’s tax overhaul last December after a provision was added to open up 1.5 million acres of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. The provision potentially allows between 4 and 12 billionbarrels of oil to be extracted and burned.

Her voting record on environmental policy has earned her a lifetime score of 19 percent from the League of Conservation Voters. Compare that to the Senate’s average score of 50 percent.

But Murkowski thinks we can have our fossil fuel cake and eat it, too. “We can absolutely continue to use hydrocarbons and critical minerals and protect the environment at the same time,” she said on Wednesday. However, leading scientists declared in 2015 that three-fourths of fossil fuels reserves needed to stay in the ground to avoid catastrophic warming — and we’ve burned a lot of oil, gas, and coal since then.

The senator did not respond to request for comment on Thursday. But at least she’s talking about climate change, I guess.

Arkansas banned a weedkiller. Now, Monsanto is suing.

When Monsanto introduced a new kind of seed that wouldn’t die when exposed to the herbicide dicamba, it triggered a crisis in the southeastern United States. Farmers planted the seed and started spraying dicamba, and it worked great! Except that it drifted onto other farmers’ fields and killed their crops.

Monsanto wasn’t happy about that. In the latest development, the agribusiness company sued the Arkansas State Plant Board, which regulates pesticides. It also sued each of the individual board members — who, for the record, are just local, agriculture-minded folks who volunteer their time.

One board member, Terry Fuller, told NPR’s Dan Charles: “I didn’t feel like I was leading the charge. I felt like I was just trying to do my duty.”

But farmers on the other side of the debate, who think the ban is way too strict, are demanding at least limited access to dicamba. What a mess.